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Preparing Cities for Electric Cars

By Jim Motavalli February 26, 2009 2:55 pmFebruary 26, 2009 2:55 pm

Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty ImagesAn electric car charging service was demonstrated in London last May.

If there’s one thing auto companies and electric-car advocates agree on, it’s the need for urban networks of recharging stations. Without that, no automaker is likely to commit to producing fleets of battery-powered electric cars or plug-in hybrids. But it appears that the charging infrastructure is finally in the pick-and-shovel stage.

Ronen Zvulun/ReutersMoshe Kaplinsky, chief executive of Better Place Israel, showed off an electric charging station outside Tel Aviv in December.

Since 2007, Better Place, a California-based company, has set up agreements to provide just such networks in Israel, Denmark, Australia, California, Hawaii and Canada. Better Place envisions charging stations (at homes, office buildings and parking garages) and battery-swapping locations along popular routes. And the company is working with the Renault-Nissan Alliance to supply electric cars as part of an integrated package.

Also in 2007, Coulomb Technologies was created as another California-based start-up with big plans to build what it calls ChargePoint Networks for E.V.’s. Along with Better Place, Coulomb (whose business model is somewhat different; it does not plan to own or swap batteries) is taking part in creating a green car infrastructure for San Francisco. Richard Lowenthal, Coulomb’s chief executive, said Coulomb expected to sell 900 stations this year in more than 100 cities and planned expansion into Europe. “Things are hopping for us,” he said.

Now there’s another player: Project Get Ready, a collaboration between the Rocky Mountain Institute think tank and an array of partners and technical advisers (including General Motors, Ford and Nissan). It doesn’t propose to actually install charging stations; instead, it’s created a Web-based template for cities to link up with local utilities, politicians and other power brokers.

Project Get Ready aims to sign up 20 cities to take part in its collaborative effort, but now it has three urban partners: Portland, Ore, Indianapolis and Raleigh, N.C.

Raleigh isn’t a hotbed for electric cars. During a Feb. 24 teleconference, Mayor Charles Meeker said there’s just one state-owned E.V. in the city, but he hopes to have a fleet of 12 within a year. On city roads, he’d like to see the several dozen privately owned E.V.’s turn into “several hundred, if not thousands” over the next few years — all connected to a grid of charging stations.

“The automobile is only part of the equation,” Paul Mitchell of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership said during the teleconference. “We need to create a smart grid akin to what we’ve seen in the I.T. industry, and we’ll work with utility companies to help develop it. It’s part of our stimulus strategy to attract jobs for our state and get the economy going again.”

Of the three cities, Portland is probably the no-brainer for plug-in vehicles because it’s a green-minded city and already has what Joe Barra, a spokesman for the Portland General Electric utility, described as the nation’s highest per capita penetration of hybrid cars. Mr. Barra said Portland has 10 charging stations in place and is working on another 10.

“It will be boring if this only happens in San Francisco,” said Laura Schewel, an institute consultant. “Our plan is to sign up 20 large and small cities and by June have them write up detailed plans for moving forward.”

Ms. Schewel said that local real-estate developers and auto dealers are likely to be enthusiastic participants in creating clean-car networks. In Raleigh, she said, a major new multiuse development has inquired about wiring its parking deck for charging stations. “The cost of prewiring new construction is a fifth to a tenth of retrofitting,” she said.

While preparing cities for electric cars, someone also has to think about how we will prepare and train first responders to handle the inevitable crashes of electric cars.

For example:

1. How they will handle a high-speed crash of an electric car? A crash where the battery case may have burst open scattering its contents, or one where the battery catches fire? Will there be any environmental concerns, or any hazards to passers by from the scattered contents of a Li-ion battery?

2. How will first responders be trained to handle crashes involving electric cars and the fires, fumes, and smoke from batteries made from reactive alkaline metals such as lithium? Will they need special fire-fighting techniques? Will they need respirators or special protection equipment?

3. How will first responders be able to rapidly identify what they face as they approach a crash scene? (Semi-trucks carrying Li-ion batteries must display a HAZMAT placard ~ will the Volt need to display a HAZMAT placard?)

4. Will first responders (or the people involved) be in any danger because of exposed high-voltage battery terminals or severed cables?

Obviously, there has always been an issue handling gasoline and diesel fires at the crash scenes of conventional cars and first responders are trained and prepared to handle those, but what issues will come to the forefront when cars having alkaline metal batteries weighing perhaps several hundred pounds are involved in high-speed crashes?

Does anyone realize that gasoline vapors are 10x more explosive than TNT?

Ever smell gasoline? That sweet odor is benzene. It’s put there to make gasoline more expolosive. It’s also a known carcinogen.

Ever look at the street surface when a heavy rain starts? Those colors you see are the runoff from vehicles. Did anyone ever raise the same objections to that pollution?

I have a better idea: go back to horses. I never hear anyone warning about the waste from them. My grandfather had people shout ‘get a horse,’ when he drove his Model T. And he broke his arm cranking it. That’s the ticket: horses. Their waste is biodegradeable. Think about it.

Of course people were killed by stampeding horses, but it was nothing compared to the carnage from cars and buses.

The big challenge now is to get mass production from carmakers as soon as possible. Compared to that, the infrastructure challenge is almost trivial.

RMI’s Project Get Ready’s kit of policies, actions and tools can help any locality, company or state roll out a green welcome mat for plug-in cars. Coulomb’s charging stations remove one more objection to plug-in cars. And Better Place has some very innovative ideas.

As for the “chicken-and-egg” issue, in fact, GM has ALREADY committed to mass production of the volt without any assurance of a network of charging stations. Early PHEV adopters don’t need a charging infrastructure — but it’s important for people who don’t have access to a plug at home, for EV drivers and for anyone who wants to plug in during the day.

On the subject of fires in plug-in cars, this is not a major concern and is of no more relevance than the concerns that were initially raised about first responders and hybrids: systems shut down automatically, cables are not in doors in the way of the “jaws of death,” etc.

A comparison of the relative safety of plug-in and gasoline/diesel vehicles may put the issue in perspective. Imagine if all our vehicles were electric and a company applied to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration for permission to produce an internal combustion car. We think the chances would be low of their getting approval to equip each car with a tank containing a very concentrated highly explosive liquid fuel that could be set off by a stray spark or could catch fire in accidents. But that’s what we drive every day. And if and when there is an incident with a plug-in car, let’s take note of the National Fire Protection Association’s report on vehicle fires (including cars, trucks and other highway vehicles; boats and ships; railroad and mass-transit vehicles; aircraft; and agricultural, construction and yard vehicles). In 2006,
vehicle fires totaled 250,00, with 445 civilian deaths, 1,075 civilian injuries and $982,000,000 in direct property damage. See for yourself at //www.nfpa.org/displayContent.asp?categoryID=953&itemID=29658

I’m not clear on what the technical hurdles are here. Doesn’t just about every building in the country have 110 volt service and 220 volts for large appliances? Do you need higher voltage or amperage to charge electric cars? If not, it seems all you need is an adapter and a meter. You could tap into the line that powers the gas pumps at service stations.

I understand that until about 1910, the way you got gas for your car was a gallon at a time from a barrel out back of the local druggists. Did people start buying a lot of cars before or after the gas station network was set up?

Actually, getting rid of horse “pollution” was one of the big appeals of urban automobiles in the early years. Horse manure is only innocuous when there are a few of them. In even modest density, the waste becomes a noxious, over-flowing mess and a conduit for contagion. Guaranteed pollution problem.

On the other hand, gasoline is also a recipe for guaranteed pollution everywhere — no one understood smog or particulates in the 1910s. Especially in dense urban areas, pollution is now being recognized as a leading cause of health problems, and a huge cost to society.

Batteries, by comparison, emit nothing, UNLESS something goes wrong. You can put the power plants downwind of population centers, or use clean power sources. Only if there is a severe collision (and a battery leak) is there a local pollution problem, and that’s speculative:

-Batteries, even Lithium-ion, are very heavy and dense. So they need to be put somewhere they won’t ruin the steering and balance of the car. Like under the floor, in the middle, where no crash would intrude.

-Batteries are usually in pretty robust cases; these are a small fraction of the weight and can be made stronger.

-equipping an electric car with a crash shutoff for the electrical system is easier and more effective than the required fuel shutoff on gas cars. No Zapped paramedics.

-Unlike a lead-acid car battery (the ones used to start gas-powered cars), Lithium-ion batteries aren’t ‘wet'; they’re filled with a paste. Most have lots of small cells instead of a few large ones, so any leak would be tiny, not liquid, and not horrible corrosive acid.

I’m sure that first responders will handle these accidents quickly and efficiently like they do with all accidents. You’re concerns shouldn’t really be any different than those of conventional cars.

#5–

I read your quip about the deaths and related injuries and it’s interesting. How many of those people died BECAUSE of the explosion and not because of the initial crash itself? I’m sure of all the cars out there and of all the accidents that occur it’s a VERY small percentage.

Let’s all remember the number of convential cars vastly outnumber the EV’s, so the accident reports are heavily skewed towards conventional cars.

Clearly, J Connors does not live in a city. We don’t live in those huge, inefficient single-family dwellings with their own garages; here the search for parking is a practiced skill, if not a blood sport. Our challenge shall be spreading the charger net wide enough to allow everybody with an EV a shot at plugging in.

This said, when does New York do any of this wonderful stuff? Is the City Council even having meetings about it? Mayor Bloomberg wants to shunt cars away from Times Sq. but does he have any plan to handle more environmentally friendly private transportation? Is the Official S.U.V. he ducks into after his perfunctory subway rides at least a hybrid? I somehow doubt it.

Actually, the pollution from horses was a terrible problem ~ especially in big cities. In the late 1800s, New York City had to figure out how to get rid of millions of pounds of horse manure every day from the more than 100,000 horses working in the city. (A horse generates 15- 35 lbs of manure each day.)

On dry days the air was continually filled with dust from manure that had been ground up and pounded to powder by wheels and hooves, and then blew up into the air. In New York City of the 1800s, it was virtually impossible to take a breath without breathing in dust from dried horse manure.

Another problem with horses is that whether you use the horse or not on any particular day, you still have to feed and care for it. I can let my car sit in a garage for two weeks without using it, and it needs no care and is ready to go when I need it. If I didn’t use a horse for two weeks, I still need to feed, groom, and are for it, plus get rid of it’s waste.

There was a reason people enthusiastically embraced horseless carriages when they came along.

We need nuclear power plants to provide, as the French get, 80% of our electric power. We need to change over to electric/hybrids starting with government vehicles, as soon as possible. The cost of fossil fuel to our environment and our economy is enormous. Clean electric vehicles can travel 50 miles without recharging. Parking garages and meters would provide the juice during the stops.
Once we go electric high-speed all across the country and electric/hybrids, with drilling for our reserves and fuel costs dropping as demand drops American will be free of her dependence on foreign oil.

Currently the Chevy Volt is planning to use Lithium Ion batteries. However, there are already better alternatives. Lithium Polymer batteries are safer and can stand higher power drains. Better yet is the Lithium Ferrite battery which is currently used in Dewalt power tools. While LiFe batteries theoretically can catch fire, there has yet to be a reported case in the real world.

So, why is the Chevy Volt going to use Lithium Ion batteries? Because they are the cheapest. And why is that? Because they are the oldest technology. In other words, GM is still up to its old habit of sticking with already obsolete technology.

Meanwhile, BYD of China is making a plug in electric car with the LiFe batteries which can be recharged four times as fast. The range may be relatively short without a recharge, but if you could plug it in every time you park for 20 or 30 minutes, you could easily drive around town taking care of your personal business all day long and still have enough charge to commute home to the suburbs.

So, lets face it folks, there are actually no problems with electric cars that cannot be solved with existing technology. The time has come.

And by the way, if you still love gasoline autos, as I do, don’t worry. More electric cars means less demand for gasoline, which means lower gas prices for you.

No. 8 – “You’re concerns shouldn’t really be any different than those of conventional cars.”

But they are different, that’s just the point. I stipulate that gasoline is dangerous, but we’ve become inured to that danger because of time and the millions of gasoline-powered cars on the road. We’ve also learned how to handle gasoline with relative safety.

But heavy batteries made from reactive alkaline metals such as lithium are a whole new ball game. I’m not saying we shouldn’t go down that path (in fact, I think we should) only that we need to do some advance planning about how to handle it.

The first time a Volt slams into a bridge abutment at 85 mph breaking open the battery case and scattering its contents, is not the time to ask, “How do you think we should we handle this?”

You will not see the currently envisaged plug-in cars in any quantity just because they do need to be plugged in so frequently. Range is the problem, not to mention the exorbitant prices. When plug-ins have >100 mile range, and when prices come down, then people will buy them and then they will be plugged in at home at night. You won’t need a massive network of plugs scattered around a city. Plug-in cars are a joke. They are small. If people were willing to drive such small cars, as is increasingly the case, cars that get combined city/highway numbers of 30 mpg, then all of the problems of foreign oil dependence and greenhouse gases (another joke) will be greatly alleviated. Been to Europe recently, where fuel tops $5 a gallon? Plenty of small cars. It’s that simple, but in the US the politics of high fuel prices are too difficult. Instead we’ll offer $5K to $10K tax credits to electric car buyers because the cars won’t make any sense otherwise.

Get a horse?
How would that help?
Horses emit CO2 (just like cows and humans), and as we know for certain, all that CO2 in the atmosphere is creating the climate change (warmer or cooler, your choice) that is killing our planet.
So horses would not, could not, be the answer.
How about everyone just staying put, and taking slow, shallow breaths?

Electric cars will remain toys for rich people until major technical problems can be overcome. Batteries cannot hold enough charge to make EVs practical, except for a few limited applications. EV hybrids have more potential but only rich people will afford the expense of both gas and electric systems. I’m still waiting for the model T of EVs. Something which most people can afford which meets their needs.

Everyone: I was being ironic. I have read the objections here and on other blogs, so I responded with irony.

I think the only way comedians make a living, is because the audience is told in advance “We have a great stand-up with us.” Otherwise, they would come out, and people would say “Is he serious?” Some people in China actually fell for “Onion” stories.

Posters who raise every possible objection, forget that when autos first started appearing, there was no support structure; it evolved. Until 1967, autos were sold without seatbelts. I don’t have to tell you about the carnage.

And yes, I know about the waste problem when horses were commonplace. My mother told me about the time her father-in-law’s horse dropped dead in the lower east side. He had to borrow to pay the removal bill. She also told me that when the Model A came out, her father traded his Model T. The Model A had an electric starter.

When I rode my motorcycle to Lancaster County, I had to watch for manure on the highway, or I’d go down.

Re the blue wing guy’s comments: A Quebec company has developed a featherweight battery that will not burn and poses no hazard whatsoever. your comments are clearly designed to dissuade folks from doing the right thing and scrapping gas burners.

This is a great advance. We need to make more people realize that the environment is more important than their bank account, or maintaining the status quo. It will cost far less in the long run, than the alternative.

Tata is still a fraction of the price with every option imaginable than a North American manufacture, especially those hulking piles of steel with the huge carbon footprint, such as those big 4×4 club cab trucks and Hummers burning our grandchildrens fuel needlessly. Usually with one lonely redneck at the wheel and nothing in the back.

OIL IS A FINITE, RAPIDLY DEPLETING RESOURCE BELONGING TO THE CITIZENS OF EARTH.

I know, I hear you say, “So what if I want to hook up the RV to the powerboat, and trailer the dirtbikes, ATV, and snowmobiles willy-nilly about the country, burning as much gas as I please, I paid for it.?”, Guess what, dinosaur, there are more vitally important uses for our petroleum resources that to cater to your wastefulness.

Transportation is much better facilitated by other means of propulsion than burning non renewable petroleum. That is our GREAT GRANDCHILDREN’S oil you are burning.

Tesla and smart are on the right track. I can’t wait for the electric versions and charging stations/battery exchange stations, (it makes sense to just swap them out for charged ones rather than waiting to charge),to be everywhere.!

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